“ now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know. ”
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925). copy citation
| Author | Virginia Woolf |
|---|---|
| Source | Mrs Dalloway |
| Topic | freedom isolation |
| Date | 1925 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200991.txt |
Context
“Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood,—by sucking a gas-pipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know. Holmes had won of course; the brute with the red nostrils had won. But even Holmes himself could not touch this last relic straying on the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world.”
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Meaning and analysis
